Natural beekeeping focuses on bee health over honey yield by allowing bees to build combs naturally without human intervention. This means using top bar hives instead of framed hives and accepting irregular comb structures. Natural beekeeping is small-scale, low cost, and low environmental impact. Problems like long grass interfering with hives can be solved simply, like extending the chicken run to include the hive so chickens can keep the grass short.

1. Natural Beekeeping
An important element in
permaculture design

2. What is natural beekeeping?
• Keeping bees in such a way that we prioritise
the needs of the bee/colony
• This means accepting a lower honey yield for
the sake of bee health and making the
conditions as natural as possible
• Bees evolved millions of years ago and have
survived successfully without our
intervention.

3. What does this mean?
• the beekeeper should not break open the
nest/hive repeatedly.
• It is important for the health of the bees that
they retain nest smell and warmth.

4. Also….
• Allowing the colony to build natural comb
means no recycled wax foundation.
• Bees do not naturally build uniform sized cells
across their combs.
• So we do not use frames or foundation that
limits the ways bees build comb

6. Natural Beekeeping focuses on:
• small scale
• low cost
• low environmental impact
• simplicity

7. The Kenyan top bar hive

8. Simplicity

9. Low cost and easy to build

10. Inside the hive
You can see the
combs the bees
have built in this
view from
underneath the
hive

11. Benefits of beekeeping
• Pollination
• Honey
• Interest
• Contributing to bee survival by building strong
colonies

12. Planting a bee garden

13. What to plant?
Just some examples:
Buttercups
Clematis
Cosmos
Crocuses
Dahlias
Echinacea
English Ivy
Foxglove
Geraniums
Germander
Globe Thistle
Hollyhocks
Hyacinth

14. And some more:
Blackberries
Cantaloupe
Cucumbers
Gourds
Fruit Trees
Peppers
Pumpkins
Raspberries
Squash
Strawberries
Watermelons
Wild Garlic

15. A problem solved

16. The situation before bees

17. Problem
• The regulations state that the hive must be
placed 3 metres from the fence if the fence is
less than 2 metres high. We had extended the
chook run along the fence and it was 2 metres
wide at the time. So we placed the bee hive
outside the chook run

18. • It wasn’t long before the grass grew up under
the bee hive to a great height and couldn’t be
mown without disturbing them. The grass was
causing an increase in humidity in the bee hive
which could have been a precursor to disease.

19. Grass

20. What to do?
• We could have lifted the beehive and put a
base down for it to stand on….
• We could have come out at night to cut the
grass down with scissors….
• We could have given up keeping bees….
• But what did we do?

21. The solution
• Put the chooks to work, of course. Extend the
chook run around the bee hive so that it was
now enclosed in the chook run while still
being the regulation distance from the fence.
Now everyone was happy.

23. Resources
• http://www.naturalbeekeeping.org.au/
• http://www.biobees.com/
• http://www.malfroysgold.com.au/
• http://beenaturalguy.com/observations/natur
al-comb/